My pre-results buy narrowly missed (by half a cent!), and moving it up after the result was no cigar either.

Ah well, it's good to see the business deliver and stay on track for its FY25 goals.

@mikebrisy At a wedding today (what inconsiderate timing from my mate!) so will keep it brief.

I had two reports yesterday with LBL and AHC that were very similar. When I saw the headline numbers I was initially disappointed they had missed my expectations but the more I dug deeper and read commentary I came away very happy with both (interestingly the market reaction has been polar opposites so far).

LBL has had all sorts of headwinds the last few years through Covid, but the underlying strength of the core Services segment has been immense. They have bolted on two acquisitions and haven't missed a beat either. This result had two issues, the decline in margin for Products and further delays with recognising revenue from Tech sales.

There are management teams I would be very sceptical on with issues like that, but LBL is not one of them. They clearly explained Products suffered from the timing mismatch of rising input prices and passing on price increases to customers, but that was achieved late in the half and they expect FY24 margins to recover. The commentary around Tech sales showed no hesitation at all, with LBL continuing to sell to clients with confidence that the headwinds affecting delivery of older orders are easing.

That said, the strength of the Services segment underpinning the businesses while Products and Tech have small hiccups really helps and sets a fantastic base for FY24 and beyond. Purely from a qualitative heuristic, I said to someone yesterday this report reminded me of the FY18 report when I first invested in the business. Operationally there were some small problems that impacted the headline numbers, but you could feel the excitement oozing out of management for the future. Reading the commentary yesterday I get that same feeling when they talk about entrenching themselves deeper with their clients and their offering becoming more and more accepted as not only a replacement for new equipment but a better outcome.

Unfortunately the valuation is a bit steeper than the 10x I paid back then but even at today's valuation I think you get a very good medium-long term return so I'm a happy holder.